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Defining the problems

Identify the potential problems and assign a name to the events generated by each problem. In this example, you want to identify the following problems:

Now you need to configure events to notify you of persistent indications of the problem. Define how persistent an indication must be before it is aggregated into an event. In this example, you define that 10 consecutive occurrences of either problem generate an event.

To qualify each event in more detail, examine what attributes to associate with an event. By defining attributes, you can obtain specific information regarding the presence of a problem as well as the possible causes. For each event in this example, the following attributes provide useful information:

Event Attributes
Excessive CPU usage
Current CPU usage
Most consuming process name
Most consuming process ID
Most consuming process usage
Processor type
Excessively consuming process
Process name
Process ID
Process CPU usage

In this example, assume that the Excessive CPU usage event returned the following results:

Attributes Results
Current CPU usage 90%
Most consuming process name Mail Application
Most consuming process ID 443
Most consuming process usage 10%
Processor type Pentium 133(TM)

Based upon this data, the most consuming process does not seem to be too consuming. You can therefore determine that the most consuming process is not likely to be the cause of excessive CPU use. Perhaps CPU performance is low because of several concurrent processes. You can also consider the type of processor you are using. Perhaps the system load is too heavy and you need a more powerful processor.

After specifying each event with attributes, determine which attribute is the key attribute, if any. In this example, the Excessive CPU usage event has no key attribute. For the Excessively consuming process event, the key attributes are the process name and process ID.


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